How to Not Get Overwhelmed: Blurb & Author Bio

This is the fourth article in the series: How to Not Get Overwhelmed with Indie Publishing. While I feel this is the most simple approach, you do not necessarily need to follow the steps exactly as we’ve laid them out. It is perfectly acceptable to handle each step in a different variation, whatever you find the least overwhelming. Here are the main topics that we’re covering in the series:

Today’s subject goes along with what we discussed last week, cover design, and is an essential part of your book publishing! Even if you are only designing for online ebooks, you’ll still need to have an author bio and book synopsis (a.k.a. back cover copy or blurb, although this has two meanings which we’ll discuss the other meaning later in this article).

The most ideal length of a back cover copy should be about 150 – 200 words. This may seem low, but it is an appropriate length to fit well on the back of a book as well as long enough to provide a great marketing teaser to the story itself.

Book Synopsis

The synopsis on the back of your book should be an overview of the story that gives enough info to raise curiosity without giving away the whole thing. It should also not be so obscure that it causes more head-scratching than the desire to read on.

While it’s true that 150 words don’t seem like much, it’s actually just enough to tell what you need without losing the potential reader’s interest. There are some basic elements that should be included:

Main characters names and who they are

A basic idea of the setting (place, era, world, etc)

A hint/question related to the plot to draw the reader in

Remember: this is the big picture for the whole book, not a place to outline the plot, so keep focused on the idea of the overall story, not necessarily the specific details.

I’ve chosen two examples of popular books and used the colors above to highlight the basic information in each. You can see that they are a little different, but they have the same elements.

As she settles into motherhood and a happy marriage,Lindsay Boxer thinks she has found domestic bliss. But when a beautiful, alluring blonde woman with links to the CIA disappears from the scene of a brutal murder at adowntown luxury hotel, Lindsay’s life begins to unravel. Before she can track down the woman for questioning, a plane crash plungesSan Francisco into chaos and Lindsay’s husband Joe vanishes.

The deeper she digs, the more Lindsay suspects that Joe shares a secret past with the mystery blonde. Thrown into a tailspin and questioning everything she thought she knew, Lindsay turns to the Women’s Murder Club for help as she tries to uncover the truth. Filled with pulse-pounding international intrigue, 15TH AFFAIR proves that all is fair in love, war, and espionage.

For thirty-five girls, the Selection is the chance of a lifetime. The opportunity to escape the life laid out for them since birth. To be swept up ina world of glittering gowns and priceless jewels. To live in a palace and compete for the heart ofgorgeous Prince Maxon.

But forAmerica Singer,being Selected is a nightmare. It means turning her back on her secret love withAspen, who is a caste below her. Leaving her home to enter a fierce competition for a crown she doesn’t want.Living in a palace that is constantly threatened by violent rebel attacks.

Then America meets Prince Maxon. Gradually, she starts to question all the plans she’s made for herself—and realizes that the life she’s always dreamed of may not compare to a future she never imagined.

Things to Notice:

The words in bold. I have added this emphasis to highlight the use of power words: words that convey emotion, are evocative and relate to the genre.

The text is not all in one large chunk. It is best to split the back cover synopsis into 2-4 paragraphs. In general, the first one or two parts will introduce the characters and the setting. The next section will give the main idea, problem, mystery, etc. of the story.

Blurbs do not require you to use complete sentences, especially when you are conveying feelings of urgency or suspense.

End with a lack of resolution, a question, an opening to the “what if” of the story like you see in the second example. This lets you know where the story might go but doesn’t tell you the actual events or what the finale will be.

What I tend to do when I write a synopsis is I write something longer then pare it down by replacing weak words with those evocative ones we talked about just a bit ago. I look for anything that appears redundant or that doesn’t convey emotion to the audience. My blurbs tend to run between 150 and 200 words.

The Beauty Thief (173 words)

The Twelve Realms exist in peace, where for the beautiful and kind-hearted Princess Caityn life is perfect. Even her betrothal is to the man she loves, High Prince Theiandar. She is surrounded by loving family and is protected from all harm. That is, until a masterful thief invades Caityn’s unspoiled world.

Dark and looming in the shadows lurks this thief of forgotten lore, full of archaic secrets and a magic hidden in the distance of time. His purpose and power is long forgotten, but his desire is alive and strong, ready to steal the one thing which sustains his life: true beauty. Princess Caityn’s beauty embodies all he has ever coveted, and before it can be tainted he plans to steal every last ounce.

Prince Theiandar’s love for Caityn is constant, but it will take much more than his tenacious will to save her. When faced with insurmountable odds and a heart devoid of the smallest hope, Caityn’s faith is extinguished, for with the full moon’s zenith comes the sealing of her fate.

This isn’t the blurb that is on the book, but I’ve learned a lot since then. I like to think this is an improvement. My real goal is to get my blurbs to between 150 – 170 words. We should continue to work on perfecting blurbs because a great cover and blurb are essential to our success, where the tantalizing synopsis on the awesome cover are the first things people will look at when they consider reading and purchasing our books.

Gaining Feedback on Your Blurb

A great way to procure pre-publishing research on the effectiveness of your story blurb is to post it on your blog with a nice poll. This allows potential readers, friends, and strangers to vote yes or no on the blurb or even various aspects of it. Leave it open to comments, and you will be amazed at the constructive feedback you’ll receive from helpful and creative readers. (WordPress makes it easy to add polls with their link to Poll Daddy. It’s available through admin.)

ENDORSEMENT BLURB: We mentioned earlier that when talking about a “book blurb” there are two meanings, the one we’ve been using throughout this article (back cover synopsis/copy) and the other: a short, often one sentence endorsement for the book from someone whose name would be favorably recognized by the potential readers of your genre.

The goal is to gain one or several such blurbs for your cover copy during pre-publication from readers who would receive advanced copies. But blurbs from well-known voices in the writing world can be difficult to obtain. Generally, it’s something like this bit of praise from Stephen King for Justin Cronin’s The Passage: “Read this book and the ordinary world disappears.”

Author Bio

I think we’ve covered more than enough great info on writing back cover copy/synopsis/blurbs, so let’s move on to that amazing author bio. Can I just say I hate writing these? As if it’s not hard enough to write an eye-catching blurb, now we gotta talk ourselves up without coming across pompous.

But don’t worry, you can do it!

Here’s the skinny on your author bio:

Keep it short. I recommend, for your book cover, it shouldn’t be longer than about 100 – 150 words. The one I use for this series is 83 words.

Write it in third person, but keep the voice of it personable as well as similar to your genre mood (or have someone else who knows you well write it about you! Maybe just give them the main details to include and let them at it).

Be brief with your history and, if possible, make it pertinent to whatever you are writing.

Include any big literary awards, prizes, etc. you might have received, but don’t beat us over the head with it. We’re just establishing credibility, not tooting our own horns here.

Some of you are like me and have no amazing credentials to add to your bio. Don’t let that get you down. Your bio doesn’t have to sound like a roster of awe-inducing bona fides, which in all honesty can sound like that pompous guy we want to avoid being. What you should focus on when writing your bio is to be authentically you, and giving readers a reason to think you are an author that they can connect with when they open the pages of your beautiful book.

One thing I notice that’s hard for a lot of authors is posting a picture of themselves. Trust me, I get it. I am not photogenic at all, and it takes about 1,000 pictures altogether to find one I can be happy with to put on display for the world to see. But I’m telling you now that people want to see your face. There is something in us as human beings that longs to see other human beings. Readers will connect with you, get a better sense of you, and likely build more trust in you when they can put a face to the name. Come out of your shell, my writer friend, and show us your face!

Between your book cover synopsis and your author bio, you will have an amazing back book cover. If you’ve got questions, please ask! I’ll do my very best to answer anything you need help with when it comes to indie publishing your work, making it the very best it can be.

Rachael Ritchey is the author of the Chronicles of the Twelve Realms, a clean YA fantasy fiction series set a medieval era of another world. Her enthusiasm for archaic settings of the past stems from her appreciation for true history, which influences us even today. When she’s not delving in to the fantastical world of the Twelve Realms, Rachael is with her family in the real world on the eastern side of Washington State where there’s plenty of inspiration to dream.

You’re welcome! I was supposed to post one today but it will have to wait until Wednesday as the BN B-fest has kinda taken over my blog posts for today and the next. 🙂 The next one will cover basics of publishing platforms!

Brilliant post with a wealth of information. I’m liking this series that you’re doing. 🙂

I’m not looking forward to doing blurbs and a bio. I am wondering though, for authors who write under a pen name, do they still put a picture of themselves with their bio? Wouldn’t that give away who they really are? I can’t say I’ve really noticed in the books I’ve read.

I’m so glad it’s proving helpful! 🙂 They are not ready at first but will get easier with time.
I think that would only be a concern if you are writing under two separate names like Nora Roberts and J D Robb, but she’s so famous everyone already knows she’s the same person. It also depends on how anonymous a person wants to stay, but celebrity comes at a cost. Think about all the actors whose faces you see out there. Some of them use pseudonyms but you might not know it. 🙂 I have thought about it myself, but I have come to the conclusion that faces stick in memory better than most things and seeing ours can help our readers better remember us.

You make a good point. I think I’m going to have to do some serious confidence boosting before I put my picture in a book, or on my blog! But you’re right, faces do stick in memory, and the big we need as authors is for readers to remember us. On with the confidence building then… 🙂

You can do this! 😀 (but I will tell you that even without seeing your face you’re still memorable to me because of your kindness, consistency, and writing style. 🙂 Seeing your face wouldn’t hurt, though!) 😀

You should write a book. 🙂 I purchased a book some time ago, named How to publish a best seller on Amazon by Nickolas Black. I read it, looked handy, but since I haven’t gone through the process myself, I can’t really review it properly. By the way, he used this book to market other his books. Anyway. Thanks for stopping by and liking my posts. I want to go back to the BlogBattle, hoping every week is the week. But I am editing my season one of Mazula now and prepping for a submission due at the end of the month. So once that is done, I will go to a normal routine. 🙂 How are you doing? I briefly saw that the BlogBattle rules changed.

Thanks, Ellie! I’ll be putting together the series into a pdf that will be available for download. I’m thinking it will be free, but only available with signing up for me email newsletter (which I only send out every few months, which is bad, which I should really change. hahaha). I enjoy your posts and miss having you in the battles, but I totally understand how busy writing and life can be! I’m doing pretty well, staying busy and sometimes overwhelmed, but good all the same. Blog Battle is basically the same, but it has it’s own blog now, offers up to 1500 words, and is only twice a month. That’s the only real changes. 🙂

I’m going to echo everyone else by saying ‘excellent post!’. All this information is so useful and spot on – I have that Deconstructing Back Cover Copy page printed out and stuck on the wall above my desk. My blurb certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s come a long way since I started writing, and much of that is due to helpful articles like this one.
Author bios are so tough to write, aren’t they? I actually did a bit of a joke post about it last week, where I threatened to make up a different one for each book. 😀

Thanks, Helen. I really like that deconstructing one. It’s great for visuals! Haha It’s a fun idea actually, although I imagine you mean something more imaginary. 🙂 I have somehow missed reading that post so now I shall definitely have to go find it as soon as I can! 🙂

Ha ha, thanks, Rachael. Honestly, I think writing the blurb and bio are two of the most difficult parts of publishing – distilling your own life story and that of your characters into just a handful of words. So these posts are so helpful 🙂

This is excellent, Rachael! Besides the cover, I’m going to have to work on synopsis and bio too. I’ll browse the links you shared.
Oh and I get what you mean about writing bios. It feels like praising yourself or something, which is something I hate doing, haha, but I like your idea of having a friend write one. 🙂

Oh phooey….this is an in my face reminder to start doing this part this week….great post Rachael….and I do mean GREAT post. If there are two things that engage prevarication mode it’s this and cover design…suddenly 55 word quest looks enticing 😱

Haha Yes, I should have seen that coming. 🙂
I kindle, smashwords, createspace, and IngramSpark. It seems like a lot, and some may be unnecessary as a new, unknown author, but I wanted it all! ;P I’ll be talking about the various publishing platforms in a few weeks. I think next week is covering info on copyright, but that’s mostly going to cover US copyright. I might find some links to a few other countries’ laws.

I’m sure you do want it all…I was referring to books though….ebooks sound ‘relatively’ easy, POD I’ve thought about and I keep looking at BookBaby too. I think your next post will be of real value to me…and date wise…is a week tomorrow battle date ????

Yes…I think we’ve crossed conversations several times and added to the chaos…do you use Facebook at all? Messages there might stay in the right order at least !!! My stories cross devices…and you should see my back up system…iPad, Dropbox, two internal terabyte drives, two internal SSD drives and a terabyte external drive….refer to Computer say No, then Conluter Say Yes posts lol

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Rachael Ritchey is the author of young adult fiction. Her clean but real and true-to-self writing reflects qualities of courage and hope with daring adventure and sweet romance that almost anyone can enjoy. Rachael lives in Spokane, WA with her husband, kids, and their dog named Hashtag.